Chapter 2731 - The Purger
Li Yao felt that his soul was stretched into an infinitely-long line.
This line crossed millions of lightyears in the blink of an eye in the four-dimension and jumped in the shadows of planets, stars, and stone belts, moving further and further away from his shell.
Eventually, he could hardly tell whether he was swinging in space or sinking in an ocean.
At first, he lost his sight. The glittering light turned into chaos until everything fell into darkness.
Then, the tidal sounds from the stars and the background noises of the universe were gone.
After that, the senses of his soul and his skin were stickier and stickier, before they were all gone under the heavy pressure.
There was nothing that could reassure him that he was still alive.
One second in the absolute desolation was like a hundred years in hell.
Even Li Yao could barely hold on anymore despite his determination. He was on the verge of collapse.
Thankfully, he had sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
The line that spanned across dozens of Sectors shivered and constricted into a tiny spot, and Li Yao regained some of the senses he just lost, allowing him to vaguely identify the light and the powerful spiritual energy around him.
Li Yao knew that he had arrived at his destination.
From the collision of spiritual energy that felt like surging tides, he was certain that his soul had successfully swung to the Thick Soil Sector. Only a battle area like the Thick Soil Sector could have so many residues of spiritual energy in space.
Those ripples were both a beacon for him and severe interferences for his soul. He had to seize every second to find a sunspot so that he could place his soul briefly in it.
Ahead of him was "Black Castle", the main planet of the Thick Soil Sector.
Although the brains of most Covenant Alliance people were dry wells, they were intelligent creatures, and they still felt like burning torches when they were gathered.
Besides, a lot of soldiers and colonizers of the Imperium who failed to evacuate were imprisoned and ready to be brainwashed. Their most powerful feelings helped Li Yao to navigate around.
Li Yao darted at Black Castle and scanned the sunspot closest to him.
"An innocent man who is influential, communicable, and gullible…"
Li Yao realized that the demands for his target were rather high.
He did not have regular senses at this moment, so it was naturally impossible for him to find a target that would meet 100% of his requirements.
He could only wish that he was lucky before he dived down at one of the most dazzling spots of light in the fire!
…
In New Joy City, or whatever left of the city, on Black Castle…
Tang Ka scanned the collapsed buildings as well as the skyscrapers that were still intact though blacked by fire and smoke indifferently.
Even when he occasionally noticed the rotten corpses of the Imperium people, the fourteen-year-old man evinced no emotion as if they were simply broken machines.
On the surface, Tang Ka was no different from his classmates next to him. They were all nonchalant and mechanical, and all of them were wearing gray protective suits. They barely had any features and looked like tombstones, and they were all obedient, loyal, and pure.
However, below the ice on the surface of Tang Ka's heart were ripples that could barely be noticed.
Tang Ka did not know if he should feel proud.
Pride would lead to arrogance, and arrogance, as well as jealousy, laziness, greed, gluttony, and fury, was a trap that the extraterritorial devils allured human beings with.
Once he was haunted by pride, he would fall deeper and deeper and end up as the extraterritorial devils' slave, like those ignorant people of the Imperium.
However, Tang Ka couldn't entirely stop himself from feeling proud.
Tang Ka tried to hold his head high and focus on the search like what his classmates were doing, but he couldn't help but glance at the badge on the left side of his chest.
It was an oval badge whose main body was a highly-abstract brain below three glittering spotlights, which made the brain pure and brilliant.
It was the badge of the Holy Light Academy.
There was more.
Below the badge were four black, evil-looking tentacles that were trying to reach for the pure and brilliant brain.
The black tentacles represented the evil forces or the extraterritorial devils and their slaves from the Imperium, who were trying to initiate corruption and contamination.
It meant that the student wearing this badge was in the middle of a very dangerous test that was examining whether or not they could resist the scourge of the extraterritorial devils and become real Purgers.
Tang Ka had reasons to be proud of himself.
He was not one of those Connate Bodies, who were the super elites that had been genetically cleansed and adjusted when they were still fetuses, but he had the bloodline of the Connate Bodies. His father's grandfather and his mother's father were both Connate Bodies.
He was an offspring of the Connate Bodies. His parents were both pious believers who were never corrupted by the extraterritorial devils, so Tang Ka was born with high purity and was entitled to more resources and better education. He was allowed to possess higher thinking abilities and more self-awareness, but as a side effect, it also increased his risks of being corrupted by extraterritorial devils.
This could be seen from Tang Ka's name.
Different from the bottom-level workers and soldiers, Tang Ka's name was not followed with a number, which meant that there weren't many people who had the same name as his. Although there might be other Tang Kas in the Covenant Alliance, the Ultimate Benevolence Masters definitely paid enough attention to them and could distinguish them from each other.
Even though he had a sacred and loyal bloodline, even though he had been living with other children who had high purity and receiving the harshest training since he was born, few of them could really be admitted into Holy Light Academy and even fewer could weather through three years of arduous training without being eliminated before the final test.
This was exactly the final test.
As long as he passed the test, he would become a real Purger or even be part of the group of Ultimate Benevolence!
Tang Ka barely dreamed, because his mentors told him that uncontrollable dreams were the attacks from the extraterritorial devils and that their pure souls would be corrupted in dreams if they were careless.
However, Tang Ka could swear to his mentors, to the director of the academy, to the Ultimate Benevolence Masters, or even to God Pangu that even though he occasionally dreamed, he was only slaying evils and serving God Pangu as a glorious Purger in his dreams.
The Purger was a very special class in the Covenant Alliance. It was also the class that was closest to the extraterritorial devils.
Thanks to the protection of God Pangu and the Ultimate Benevolence Masters, the Imperium of True Human Beings, which was possessed by the devils, was vulnerable and couldn't defeat the Covenant Alliance at all in the battlefield.
However, the cunning extraterritorial devils had more than one way to corrupt people. In the lands rotted by the extraterritorial devils, intense feelings, as well as useless and dangerous items made of feelings, often lingered.
The delicious cuisines, the beautiful clothes, the makeups, the toys, the entertaining products, and almost all the artworks from the Imperium were both a waste of precious resources and triggers to raise the sins in the human heart such as jealousy, fury, arrogance, etc.
Those were all the traps of the extraterritorial devils.
Once the ordinary Covenant Alliance people such as the workers and soldiers who weren't good at thinking got in touch with such items, they would likely be attracted to those items. Even if they were not corrupted, they would have irrelevant thoughts in their heads, which would affect their efficiency in work and battle and even the stability of the whole society.
So, after the army of the Covenant Alliance conquered every planet of the Imperium, they would send out Purgers first to fully cleanse all the stuff that the Imperium left on the planet before they deployed the workers and the soldiers for reconstruction and defense.
To fully cleanse the stuff did not mean to burn it up. The resources in the universe were rare and precious. As servants to God Pangu, the Covenant Alliance people were not qualified to waste any of the resources. So much as the items had 1% of their original value, they would be recollected for a more sacred purpose.
Therefore, the Purgers must be capable of identifying the items from the Imperium and determining which of them could be supplied to the Covenant Alliance after sterilization, which could be dismantled and delivered to different factories to be reused, and which must be destroyed right on the spot without being seen by the workers and the soldiers.
It was not hard to imagine that the mission was both dangerous and complicated.